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Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray

Low-carb running

147. Bucking Conventional Wisdom

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Most of the people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet. And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction - their blood sugar and blood pressure are too …

Continue Reading about 147. Bucking Conventional Wisdom →

Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 147 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, bucking conventional wisdom. Most people in this country eat a pretty terrible diet.

And because of that, most people are experiencing some sort of metabolic dysfunction, their blood sugar and blood pressure are way too high, carrying around too much body fat, they’re at higher risk for heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, just to name a few.

The troubling part about all this is that this is considered normal here in this country, okay, and in a lot of other parts of the world. So if you want to be different, meaning that you want to be the healthiest human being that you can possibly be, you’re going to have to do things differently. For most people, you’re going to have to buck conventional wisdom.

So in this episode, I’m going to break down what’s considered normal, what’s not, and how bucking conventional wisdom might be the best possible thing that you could do for yourself. And as always, if you’re looking for some help with any of this, or all the stuff that I’m talking about here, on the podcast, consider applying for coaching with me, it’s one thing to know what to do, it’s quite another thing to actually have the expert guidance and support of a coach to hold you accountable, and help you make all these big changes that you want for yourself.

Whether it’s improving your body composition, getting stronger, running faster, or just becoming the healthiest and most badass version of yourself, working with a coach is how you get there. So if you want to have me in your corner, every step of the way, apply to join the Running Lean coaching project to learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners, the Running Lean coaching project where the project is you.

Okay, so what prompted this conversation today. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what people consider normal, and I talked to a lot of clients who feel like what they’re doing is not normal, and therefore, is difficult or is challenging, or is uncomfortable or is hard.

And they fall into this place where they just want to be doing all the normal stuff, okay, so they feel like maybe they are the weird one at the table, they feel like an outsider, they kind of feel separate, not a part of because they’re not going along with what everybody else is doing.

And they see this as a problem. So they see it as a problem, because conventional wisdom, wisdom will tell them and conventional wisdom tells us that we should be eating the food pyramid, right that we should never restrict any foods that you know, in order to run as a runner in order to function well as a runner, you have to like eat all the carbs and all the sugar, right?

And so when we get it into our heads that we should be doing all this stuff out there, there, there becomes this internal conflict. Because what we want to do in order to change our health for the better, in order to improve our health, our fitness, or speed, our body composition, whatever it is you want for yourself, what we do to get there goes against conventional wisdom.

And people feel like they should be able to do what everybody else is doing. But they can’t do what everybody else is doing because they can’t make these changes they want for themselves. So that’s where the internal conflict comes from. That’s where the inner turmoil comes from.

Everybody else is drinking alcohol and I’m not. Everybody else is eating the pizza and getting dessert and eating the ice cream and eating all the junk food and I’m not. And the internal conflict isn’t actually caused by what other people are doing. It’s caused by your thoughts because you think you should be able to do what everybody else is doing.

And you should be able to become healthier and lose the weight and get stronger and improve your health and all that stuff. Right? The cold hard truth is this though. You don’t become badass by doing what everybody else is doing. You only become badass by ditching conventional wisdom and cutting your own path, okay?

So here’s the trouble with what everybody else out there is doing. So most people are eating the food pyramid or the MyPlate, or whatever the government is telling us we should be eating, okay? The government has this agenda, to push grains on us to push sugars on us.

All these studies are funded by the big agricultural companies, big food companies like Kellogg’s and Coca Cola. And they’re making these decisions about what we should be eating in this country. Okay, so a lot of the food programs in this country, the things that are served in hospitals, what our kids eat in schools with military eats, all this is driven by the food pyramid or my plate or whatever they’re calling it these days, okay?

This is a diet that is very high in sugar and carbohydrates, it’s up to 65% of your calories should be coming from refined grains and sugar. And you should limit fats and meats. And you should just be eating all the grains, like that’s the healthy stuff. You know, eat the fruits and the grains and stay away from you know, fat and meat and things like that.

But you know, what’s interesting is, if you want to fatten up a cow, what do you do? You feed it grains, right? So grass fed beef, grass fed, and grass finished beef, this is beef that only eats grass. If you’ve ever seen this at the grocery store, you will see that it is very lean there. It’s very red. Like there’s very little marbling in there at all. There’s very little fat in there at all, almost none.

But when you look at grain fed beef or grain finished beef, in other words, they feed it grain towards the end of its cycle, whatever, then there’s a lot of fat in that. So isn’t it interesting that cows naturally don’t eat grains, cows eat grass, and they can stay pretty lean if they do that. But that’s not what people want. So we feed cows grains to fatten them up.

You want to know how to fatten up a human being? Feed them grains, will just do the exact same thing. It’ll create all this internal visceral fat and intramuscular fat. And if you don’t want all that, then stop eating the grains. Pretty simple, right?

How about wild caught salmon? Have you ever seen wild caught salmon at the store? It’s very lean, there’s very little fat in there. It’s delicious. It’s really got a nice beautiful orangish red color. And then there’s the farmed salmon. The farm salmon is fed a diet of plants and grains and fish meal and farmed salmon. You know, it’s really fatty because they’re feeding it weird stuff like grains again, right fish don’t eat grains. Right?

And so when you feed a fish, the grains are how you fatten them up, right? And what’s interesting about salmon is that farmed salmon, because the salmon are not eating their normal diet of krill, which actually colors their flesh, because of the pink little creatures, whatever they are, they have to add dye to the to the meat or to the to the feed that they feed the salmon otherwise they would just be gray.

And people don’t want to eat grey salmon, right? So anyway, this is all really dysfunctional, like the way that we fatten up animals in order to, you know, make them more desirable for us. But here’s the thing, here’s my point with all this is that we humans were not really designed to process the Greens either.

So when we eat the greens, we get that to, you know, you want to increase the intramuscular fat and yourself just eat a bunch of grains. Okay, so the point with all this is that when you look out in the wild, when you look at wild animals, there are no overweight wild animals, because each animal species is eating a specific diet that is appropriate for that animal.

The only two animals well, maybe I’ll make an exception here, but the only animals on this planet that are overweight, would be humans and their pets and of course the cows and pigs and fish that we fatten up intentionally okay. So, we human beings are not eating the appropriate diet, but we’re following the food guidelines. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.

We’re good at following directions like this, you know, when, when the government came out with all the dangers of smoking cigarettes, we listened. We stopped smoking in the 1970s over 40% of Americans smoked. And that number is way way down to just 16% in 2018. So they came out with all these guidelines and told us Hey, smoking is bad. You should stop smoking and we did you know down from 40% to 16%. That’s me.

And the same goes for the food guidelines, right? The standard American diet that we have today was introduced in 1980. And up to that point, the obesity rates in this country were pretty stable, you know, during the 50s 60s 70s, right?

Once we introduced these guidelines, obesity rates began to surge. So they are around 13%. In 1980, obesity rates in this country were about 13%. In 2022, that number is up to 40%! 40% of people in the US are considered obese today, that’s for adults.

And then for children, this kind of makes me sad, because we’re fattening up our kids, unfortunately. But the obesity rate for children was 5%, before 1980, and it’s up to 20% today. So by all means, feel free to do what everybody else is doing, but just know that what everybody else is doing is really bad for you, it’s detrimental to your health and well being. Okay.

So you might be thinking, well, you know, Patrick, I’m a runner. And so this stuff doesn’t really apply to me, right. And here’s what I’m gonna say about that. Because every single day, I talk to runners who have been following the conventional wisdom out there, they might be eating the standard American diet as well. And they think that running is going to be the cure all.

That if they just run more, everything would be fine, if that doesn’t really work. Or they’re eating what I call the typical runner’s diet, which is all carbs all the time like they’re carbterians, right. So they carb load for days leading up to the long runs, they’re fueling up on carbs before running, they’re sucking down the gels and the goos. And the Gatorade, which is just sugar water, during their runs.

They’re making sure they get all those recovery carbs too, after their runs. And they’re basically just eating whatever they want. They’re like, I’m just gonna eat doughnuts and beer and ice cream and pizza, whatever, because hey, I’m a runner, I run, it’s not good enough. And they literally cannot understand why they keep gaining weight, especially as they get older.

All that sugar, all those grains, all that high carbohydrate diet just eventually catches up with you, and you start packing on the pounds. And I had personal experience with this too. You know, I was training for ultra marathons. And eating that kind of diet that I just described, it was like all carbs all the time.

And during this period, there were times where I was running up to 85 miles a week. And over about a two and a half year period or so I gained like 40 pounds. So all this running in the world wasn’t impacting my weight at all. I kept slowly gaining weight. And so this is not unusual. This is not just a one off type of thing.

Like I said, I talk to people every single day, who are doing what everybody else is doing. They’re following the conventional wisdom. And it just doesn’t work. They just keep getting, you know, more overweight, they’re carrying around way too much body fat and, and running is not helping with this, right, the diet is wrong, the diet does not work.

Now, the conventional wisdom out there, it might work for some people, that’s fine. If you’re one of those people that’s like, hey Patrick, I eat whatever I want. And I’m fine. I’m not overweight, I’m super healthy. And I can eat all that stuff. Like totally fine. Like if that works for you, that is amazing. But that is not the case for most people.

So you get to decide what you want to do. And if what’s working out there, you know, the conventional thinking is working for you fine, but if it’s not, you got to try a different approach, you got to do something different. Maybe try to stop eating the processed foods and the sugar and the grades and see what happens. Maybe stop doing all the fast food stuff. Because you know, it’s easy, but it’s not really good for you. It’s not really working for you.

Start eating actual real whole foods instead. Maybe stop doing the all carb diet as a runner, and see how you can improve your health and your running at the same time by ditching some of those problematic carbs and sugars and stuff. Bucking conventional wisdom is hard.

It’s hard because we are a society that loves junk food, just about every packaged, processed food is made with junk, it’s sugar, refined grains, seed oils, it’s like these are the worst three things that you can put into your body, by the way. And when you go out to eat at restaurants, you know, you’re going to places whose menus are full of foods that contain those three ingredients, right? And it can be challenging sometimes to find real food at restaurants, which seems ridiculous, right?

Restaurants are interesting too, because they’re pushing appetizers. So that’s the food you eat before you eat your food. They’re pushing out alcohol on you, that’s their big moneymaker. They’re pushing desserts on you, that’s the food you eat after you eat your food. So their job is really to drive up the price of your bill as much as possible, they don’t care about your health, they don’t care about you being healthy and feeling good.

They want to make as much money off of you as possible. That’s it, which is fine, I get it, they’re a business they’re running, you know, they want to like, make sure that you leave, you know, happy and fat and happy when you leave the restaurant, you know, and it’s working. It’s working.

You know, and then there’s like social pressures, you know, going against what normal, quote unquote, normal people are doing is hard, because there’s social pressures from friends and family. Oh, come on, Patrick, just live a little, you know, have a drink, eat the dessert, you deserve it, you’ve been good all week, you know, come on, just live a little every now and then let your hair down, so to speak.

Or, you know, oh, well, I have kids, and my kids have to eat all this junk food. So I keep all this junk food in the house, which means that, you know, I’m just going to eat it sometimes too, because it’s there. Or, you know, oh, I’m having lunch with this client at work, and my boss is going to be there and they all drink during lunch, so I got to drink too.

Or, you know, they’re all going to want to eat, you know, this pasta and bread and stuff. So I have to just go along with it. Because not doing that is going to be I don’t want to be the weird one at the table. Right.

So going against what everybody else is doing is hard, it is uncomfortable, I totally get that. Going against the grain pun intended. It’s uncomfortable, because you are different. You’re not like everyone else, you’re not doing what everybody else is doing. You’re not accepting this fate of just getting fatter, and sicker and weaker.

As you get older, you know, you’re not using sugar and alcohol to feel better anymore. And that definitely doesn’t feel good, but it’s temporary. So you’re gonna be sitting at the dinner table eating something different than everybody else may be eating. They’re all eating pizza, and you’re having a salad instead. But every time you stick to your plan, you reinforce this idea that being a healthy human being is important to you.

And every time you give in and just go along with what everybody else is doing, you reinforce the notion that your health is not that important to you, that it’s more important to just be comfortable here in this moment. So here’s what I want you to do, I want you to really ask yourself, what do you want for yourself?

Do you want to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself? I hope you do. Because if you do, you have to do things differently. Most people eat a pretty crap diet. Most people are overweight. Most people have some sort of metabolic dysfunction happening in their body. Most runners are carrying around way too much body fat.

Most people as they get older, get weaker and fatter. And you need to ask yourself, do you want this for yourself? Or do you want something more. Because if you want something more, that’s going to take a little bit of work to get there. It’s going to take being willing to be uncomfortable in those situations where you’re doing things differently. It’s going to take you getting to this place where you feel good about yourself and you feel confident about yourself.

And you feel confident in your decisions that you’re making in those moments where everybody else is doing the normal junk food and getting whatever food is there, and you’re doing something different. You’re being different. And I think that when you get to that place, it is an amazing place to get to. Because you no longer care about what is considered normal.

The conventional wisdom doesn’t work for most of us. So we got to buck the system, we got to do things differently. We get to cut our own path. And you get to decide if that’s what you want for yourself. Because if you do want that, be willing and ready to embrace the discomfort that comes along with that.

There will be discomfort that comes along with that, I promise you, but it’s short lived. It’s temporary, it doesn’t last forever. It takes some time to get past that. But once you do get past that, that’s where the good stuff really starts to happen. Cool. And as always, if you want help with this, I’m here for you. We’ll put together a personalized plan just for you. I’ll help you stay on track and together we will get you there. Cool. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

145. All or Nothing is Not Always Best

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I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately from people in the low-carb athlete community who tend to adhere to an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to diet and exercise. They hear that low carb …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 145, of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, all or nothing is not always best. So I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately from people in the low carb athletic community, who really tend to adhere to an all or nothing mentality when it comes to their diet and how they exercise.

So they might hear that low carb is a good way to go. And so they’re like zero carbs all the time. And that’s how they do it. And that’s kind of what they’re putting out there in the stories. They’re telling you just about no carbs, no carbs, no carbs. They might hear that training in the fasted state has certain benefits, which I’ll be talking about that in a minute, and it absolutely does; but then they do all their workouts fasted, no matter what, all of them all the time.

So today, I want to address these principles, these beliefs that I think some people have, because I think it’s important to understand when the all or nothing approach should be embraced and when it should be avoided. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why all or nothing is not always best, especially when it comes to nutrition and exercise for the endurance athlete.

So when should you use fuel for workouts? When should you add carbs around those workouts? How much fuel, how many carbs? What types of carbs? These are all great questions. And they require more information, they require more context, you can’t just answer these questions for everyone the same way because we’re all different. Everyone is different.

And we each need to figure out the right formula, right for what is going to work for you as an individual. It’s like building the perfect recipe around fuel, fuel timing, the types of exercises, you’re doing your exercise intensities, your rest, recovery, all that stuff matters. And it’s all different for each person, there’s not one recipe that’s going to work perfectly for every individual. This is why I do what I do. This is why I’m a coach.

This is why I work one on one with my clients to help you figure out the right recipe to help you figure out the right recipe that’s going to get you to your fitness goals, get you to your weight loss goals and help you improve your health overall. The only way to figure all this stuff out is really by kind of trying some things, seeing what works and then of course correcting right it’s trial and error.

And having a coach there to guide you through this process every step of the way is going to make it so much easier. So if you’re looking for that guidance, the support, the encouragement that you get from a coach, the motivation and the accountability apply to join the Running Lean coaching project. To learn more just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. I would love to have you join me in my unique weight loss coaching program for runners the Running Lean coaching project where the project is as always you.

Alright, so let’s get into this all or nothing approach here. Okay, and why I’m talking about this today is because I’ve been hearing a lot about people that embrace the low carb approach to endurance sports. And I love this approach. Obviously, I talk about this all the time. And they also talk about fasted workouts and they and they talk about doing all of their workouts fasted all the time.

And when I hear these things, when I hear people talk about zero carbs and carbs being bad and you have to avoid all carbs all the time. And when I hear about people doing all their workouts fasted all the time, it kind of makes me cringe just a little bit. And maybe I’ve kind of promoted some of this by talking about how I’ve done a marathon.

Well, actually I’ve done like two marathons and 50k all with zero calories fasted just to say like, hey, you know, you can do this right? You don’t need carbs to run, you know, it’s kind of fun. I tried to prove a point, you know, but maybe people think that this is like, the only way to go and it really isn’t. Okay. So a low carb approach to endurance sports does not mean zero carbs.

And training in the fasted state at times doesn’t mean you have to do all of your workouts fasted, and it doesn’t mean that you never fuel for anything. Okay, so I wanted to talk about this today and really kind of shed some light, especially in these two areas, when it comes to nutrition.

And the low carb approach, I want to make sure we understand that there are times when you will want to use some strategic carbohydrates to fuel your workouts and, and then adding fuel for workouts and not necessarily doing everything in the fasted state. Now, there’s benefits to doing these things to doing a low carb approach, or kind of a zero carb approach at times. There’s also benefits to training in the fasted state at times. But it doesn’t mean we do it all the time.

And it doesn’t mean that we never use carbs or never use fuel for our workouts. So I want to make sure that we get a better idea of when it’s okay to do these things. And when it’s okay to experiment with adding in some fuels, and especially adding some carbohydrates to help improve our performance to help improve our fitness. Because they’re not, as you know, carbs are not the enemy.

Carbs are not evil, carbs are not bad. Yes, the types of carbs you use does matter. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But just remember that all or nothing is not always best, okay, and all or nothing is definitely not how we need to do, how we need to do all this stuff. Okay, so I just want to shed some light on this so that we can be successful and do it in a way that can support us.

And we can add some carbs and add some fuel and not have to do all this stuff. Totally fasted or unfasted, or zero carbs, it’s not a zero carb approach, I’ve never really talked about that being the only way to go, okay. So, all these things matter. And I kind of touched on this at the beginning here, all these things depend on you as an individual.

So being fat adapted just means it kind of means different things to different people. And being a fat adapted athlete is going to look different for somebody who maybe they’re training for their first 5k. And so they’re doing like a couch to 5k program and they’re just getting started with running. And they’re doing most of their runs at a very low intensity, a very low heart rate. And they’re losing weight in the process. And they’re feeling amazing. That might be a great place for someone to do a lot of workouts fasted and to really not dip into the carbs too much, okay.

But if you’re somebody who is, you know, training for your fastest marathon, and you’re trying to qualify for Boston, and you’ve got to shave, you know, 15 minutes off your marathon time, your intensity level is going to be high, your training is going to be high. And for higher intensity levels and longer training sessions and more intense longer training sessions especially, you will absolutely want to fuel for those things.

And you do not have to do those things fasted. So being fat adapted means different things for different people, we’re all a little bit different. We have to accept and acknowledge this. And then all these different differences in our goals in our training levels and our fitness levels in our gender like men and women need to feel a little bit differently for these things. So all these things matter.

And we have to look at this as an experiment of one and you’ll hear me say this probably 10 times today, because an experiment of one is always how we approach all of this stuff when it comes to changing your diet, losing weight, getting faster, you know, getting stronger, we all have to do this and play around with some things and figure out what works best for us. Okay, so first I want to talk about carbs.

So the first principle that I kind of hear people get into is, you know, oh, low carb, that means no carbs, zero carbs. And as athletes, we can use carbs. And we can time our carbs around our workouts and it’s not going to kick us out of fat burning mode.

It’s not going to, you know, ruin what you’re doing here and it’s not going to mean you’re starting from scratch. I’ve heard some people ask that question where Oh, you know, ate some carbs. Does that mean I’m not fat adapted anymore? It’s like no, absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that at all.

Getting fat adapted means you’re burning fat really efficiently. you’ve trained your body to burn fat efficiently as athletes and especially if you want to increase your performance and increase your fitness. It’s a good idea to use some carbs and time them around your workouts and improve your metabolic flexibility, you want to be metabolically flexible, you want to be able to use both carbs and fat as fuel efficiently. Why not?

Why would you just rely on fat as a fuel source? Fat is a great fuel source and, and you can really get really efficient at burning fat even at higher intensities, but we don’t have to use just fat as fuel, we can absolutely use carbs, okay. So if your goal, again, you’re gonna, you want to crush your fastest half marathon, different phases of that training cycle will require you to increase your carbohydrate intake, especially around those workouts, you know, and maybe even on a daily basis as your training cycle increases.

So if you’re, you know, if you’re doing the lower carb approach, and your goal is to lose weight, and you’re probably in that 30 to 50 grams of carbs a day kind of mode, or whatever, and that kind of works for you, you know,if your intensity is increasing in your workouts, and you’re really crushing some more intense harder workouts, you might be in that 80 to 100 grams of carbs, a day kind of mode, you know, and, and it’s not going to kick you out of fat burning mode, and it’s not going to impair your performance, if anything, it’s going to give you that extra gear, when your intensity increases.

So initially, we do want to keep our carbs low and get fat adapted. And then over time, we want to start to slowly kind of ramp up our carbs, as your body responds positively to the changes, you want to ramp up your carbohydrate intake, depending on the intensity levels of your training. And this does not mean that we’re going to just go crazy and eat, you know, just you know, whatever you like to eat, that’s like pure sugar and junk food, like we’re not talking about that.

We’re talking about using real whole foods, sources of carbohydrate and some slow burning carbohydrates in order to improve your running performance. So remember that, you know, when we this whole low carb approach is to help regulate blood sugar, it’s to help, you know keep your blood sugar from from spiking and crashing, to keep your insulin levels normal instead of because when your blood sugar spikes, insulin spikes, and then you’re you’re in that fat storage mode, you know, you’re burning, you’re burning the sugar, you’re burning sugar and you’re storing fat and we need to get blood sugar normal.

We need to stop the spikes and crashes in the blood sugar, stop the spikes and crashes in the insulin levels so that your body can start burning fat instead of burning all the carbohydrates that you’re eating. Okay. Think of this like a fire. I love this analogy. So sugar, it’s like kindling, right? It burns first. It’s the first fuel source your body will use. It burns very quickly. But it’s not sustainable. It depletes rapidly and then you’re left with nothing. Okay? So sugar’s like kindling, it burns quickly, it burns first, but it doesn’t burn very long. It’s just it’s boom, burns and it’s gone.

Whereas fat burning is like the logs you put on the fire right, it takes a little bit longer to get going. But once it’s burning, it’s going to last a very, very long time. And to achieve this log burning to achieve the fat burning, we need to get rid of the sugar and the refined carbs and the processed junk food and the carbage, I like to call it, and we need to get into the fat burning, we need to get into the log burning.

And once we do that, you will have steady energy and you will have plenty of energy to fuel your you know lower intensity workouts especially at the beginning, okay, but that does not mean you never use any kind of carbs to improve, okay. And again, what we’re after is metabolic flexibility, the ability to burn both types of fuel sugar and fat very effectively.

Humans are really good fat burners, we’re, we’re naturally good fat burners, it’s our natural state of being. And we’ve just gotten away from that state. This junk food is processed carbohydrates, the carbage that we’ve been eating, it now makes up over 50% of the calories that we consume here in the United States. And that number is rising every single year. We’ve become a nation of sugar eaters, and therefore sugar burners.

So we’re not burning fat naturally anymore. And we’re gaining weight and you know, experiencing all kinds of metabolic issues and diseases and you know, obesity and all these other things, right? So we all were talking about doing things like lower the carbohydrate intake, get rid of the junk food, get rid of the garbage and start eating real whole foods. Doesn’t mean zero carbs. It does mean we will ditch a lot of the problematic carbs But we want to use some types of carbohydrates and time them around our workout so that we get the benefits of the added sugar intake from the added carbohydrate intake.

Because when you’re burning fat efficiently and when you’re exercising at a higher intensity, you’re going to burn through that sugar that you’re taking in, you’re going to burn through the carbohydrates that you’re fueling with pretty quickly. And then you’re back into fat burning again. Okay, so it’s not like you just like, oh, you’re just always burning sugar or always fat, you’re always burning both, right, but at different levels, different intensities, okay.

So when you increase your exercise intensity, you might also need to increase your carb intake. And this is where most people kind of freak out a little bit, right, they’re like, oh, my gosh, no way, I don’t want to eat any carbs, I’m gonna kick myself out of fat burning mode, I’m gonna be fat adapted, you know, low carb, low carb, zero carb.

But listen, don’t freak out, there’s a way to do this in a way that it’s not gonna really affect your body’s ability to burn fat, you can still burn fat and burn sugar at the same time, okay, if most of your training is done at a low heart rate and a lower intensity, then there’s not much of a need to add carbs as fuel, you can continue to burn fat efficiently.

And if you’re just doing some, some lower intensity stuff, lower heart rate stuff, you’re gonna be fine, you can improve your fitness, you know, you can get a little bit you know, stronger as a runner, and you can get a little bit faster, and that’s going to be fine. But if you really want to make some gains, you want to improve fitness, you get stronger, get faster, workout at higher intensities, higher heart rates, then some strategic carbs around those workouts will give you the energy that you need to improve and to and to go a little harder.

And to have that extra gear that you need to hit those faster times and hit that PR, okay. And it doesn’t mean that you have to go and start downing all the gu’s and gels and sports drinks that are laden with high fructose corn syrup and all this junk, right? There are fuels that are specifically made for the fat adapted athlete, and there’s brands like Muir energy, and that’s M-U-I-R, there’s S-fuels, there’s you can and these all make products that have slow burning carbohydrate fuels designed for the low carb athlete, so check out those brands, but really, we’re talking like 12 to 20 grams of slow burning carbs per hour might be enough to give you that little bit of an extra edge that you need.

You know, 20 grams of carbs is like a medium size banana, this is not a lot of fuel we’re talking about here, okay, so don’t freak out about this too much. But consider trying some carbohydrates around your workouts and see what works for you. Again, we’re all different. This is an experiment of one, try it and see how it feels and how it works for you.

If your goal is just to lose weight, if you’re just interested in losing weight, you’re not interested in improving your running or running longer, then stick to the low carb approach. You know, again, it doesn’t mean zero carbs, but just stick to the low carb, you know, nutrition regimen. Keeping in mind that, you know, some people will require slightly more carbs than others. And everybody’s a little different, you know.

In talking about like pre menopausal women versus postmenopausal women, pre menopausal women will probably need a little bit more carbs, especially around certain days of their cycle. I’m actually going to put together a podcast on this topic and just kind of talk about how women are different from men and how they require a little bit of a different approach when it comes to nutrition and around fitness.

Because you guys men and women are different, did you know that we are very different and we all have some slightly different needs. And I’ve been really doing some research on this lately. And it’s a fascinating topic to me. And I’m learning a lot about how women respond differently to dietary changes in intensity levels, changes in their workouts and things like that.

So we can all do this, we can all kind of maintain that kind of a lower carb approach. But we don’t have to do it with zero carbs. Okay, so when it comes to carbs, especially for the endurance athlete, all or nothing is definitely not always best. Adding in some carbs as fuel around your workouts is recommended for most people for most low carb athletes.

Especially if you want to improve your performance, okay, you can still maintain efficient fat burning, you can still lose weight, you can still prioritize fat as that main fuel source you still get to those, those logs that you’re burning, okay, but you’re just adding in a little bit of kindling to help get things going. Okay. And you’ll burn through the carbs during your workout.

So you’re not going to be like storing a lot of extra energy as fat or anything like that. Okay? So for the first sort of all or nothing, zero carbs versus some carbs, definitely, you know, give it a shot, try fueling some workouts and see how it goes.

The other all or nothing mentality is around fasting and whether or not we should be doing all of our workouts in that fasted state. And I’ve just seen a lot of people talking about this lately. And I wanted to really clear this one up too, because I think there’s some misconceptions here as well.

So, fasting, the way I’m talking about here is basically when you train in the fasted state, meaning you haven’t had any kind of fuel, any food at all, really no calories, for, you know, typically like 4 to 12 hours prior to working out. So let’s say you typically what most people do is they eat dinner, the night before they wake up in the morning, it’s been, you know, 12 hours, since they last ate, they might have a cup of coffee, and then they go and do a workout that would be considered training in the fasted state, they do a workout, they don’t use any kind of fuel.

And this is pretty, pretty effective. You know, this is a good way of ramping up, the fat burning is a good way of getting your body fat adapted. So fasting has lots of benefits and training in this state has many, many benefits, right? And please understand that fasting this way is like super normal and supernatural, it’s just kind of our natural state as humans.

One of the things I’ve heard recently, which I think is really fascinating is that the human body is designed to process digest, metabolize about two meals a day, you know, one to two meals a day is about all that we’re really supposed to be metabolizing because our pancreas can’t work more than that. And our liver has issues if we are processing more than that.

So the systems of the human body are naturally designed for eating a couple of times a day, and that’s about it. So fasting is really a natural state, again, burning fat and fasting very natural states for humans to be in, okay. But we’ve gotten away from that. We have to, you know, adhere to this three meals a day, plus eight snacks and dessert, you know, it’s like we’re eating 13 times a day or whatever. It’s ridiculous, right? We don’t need to eat that often. Right?

But so fasting, working out in the fasted state just means that you’re working out without added calories without fuel for that workout. Okay, so it helps you to get fat adapted, it helps you to stay fat adapted helps you to burn more body fat, no fuel coming in, means your body is prioritizing that stored body fat as fuel.

And the low carb approach and fasting like this and doing workouts in that fasted state all help to maintain the blood sugar like I mentioned earlier, they help to keep the insulin levels down, help to prioritize fat as fuel will help you to tap into that stored body fat as fuel. These are all amazing benefits of working out in that fasted state.

You know, the fasted workouts also help improve your fat burning efficiency. And even at higher intensities. So for most normal carb adapted athletes, you know, they’ll burn fat up to about 60-65% of their VO2 max and then they kind of start prioritizing just carbohydrates as fuel, they need carbohydrates fuel.

But as fat adapted athletes, we can actually push our fat burning up into the 75, 80 90% range. And there are some elite athletes who even go above 90% and fat burning, so 90% of their VO2 max. So this is like, massively cool, right? This is massively cool because we can not only burn fat at the lower intensities, but we are also really good at burning fat at the higher intensities, okay, so this is going to help you improve your higher intensity running is going to indefinitely improve your endurance more fat burning means you’re just going to be able to go longer without bonking, which is super amazing.

And then also training in the fastest state helps to improve your hormonal responses. So more adrenaline gets produced when you’re working out in the fasted state, which means you can go a little bit harder. It’s almost like a performance enhancing tool, you know, and then more growth hormone gets produced to help you recover faster from those workouts.

So this combination of you can go harder and recover faster is pretty awesome. And then people are like, well, yeah, so I want to do that all the time. But here’s the thing. Is it necessary or is it a good idea to always do all of your workouts in that fasted state? Yeah, there’s some great benefits to doing it. But it isn’t necessary to do it all the time.

So, I recommend people definitely train in that fasted state to build the fat adaptation and to really get efficient at burning fat. Okay, and this could take a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Again, we’re all an experiment of one. Everybody’s preferences are a little bit different. Some people love training in that fasted state, some people just don’t, they just don’t like doing it doesn’t feel good. I’ve heard people that kind of get sick when they train in the fasted state, they need some fuel, okay, great, then you’re the kind of person that would benefit from some fuel, okay.

But if you find that you, your workouts, maybe you’re taking a hit like you’ve hit a plateau in your fitness and you’re not improving, maybe you’re not getting faster, maybe you’re not recovering as quickly. Maybe your heart rate isn’t where you want it to be, it’s staying super high, you might want to consider adding in some fuel for your workouts, you know.

But I do love the idea of doing kind of the bulk of your training, especially at the beginning, in this fasted state, when you’re trying to get fat adapted, it just helps you to get through that initial phase, that first phase of getting your body trained to burn fat more efficiently. It really helps with that whole process. Okay?

So it’s a good way to begin, but it doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time. So how do you know like, when it’s time to add some fuel to your workouts, keep track of your workouts, log your workouts in a log or journal. Maybe you use an app. But you know, look at things like heart rate, pace, how you felt during that workout recovery time, you know, how long does it take you to recover? And then don’t be afraid to just try some fuel and see how it affects you.

Everybody’s a little bit different. So you got to try something and see if it works. If it does, great. If not, then try something else. And what kinds of fuel are we talking about here? Well, I just mentioned using carbs as fuel, so that’s always an option. But it doesn’t even have to be carbs. Because when you’re fat adapted, you can take advantage of using exogenous fat as fuel so fat that you eat, you know, fat and protein actually can work pretty beautifully as a fuel source.

Okay, so remember, we burn sugar first, and we can burn like fat that we get in our diet and then we kind of burn that stored body fat. So if we you know, don’t have carbs coming in, we’ll be able to take advantage of the some of the fat that we’re getting in our diet so we can actually use some fat as fuel before a workout.

And this might be as simple as putting MCT oil and heavy cream and some collagen in your coffee pre workout. That’s it. Like that could be how you fuel a workout. And remember all the brands that I mentioned above Muir energy, S-fuels you can they all have products for like pre workout, for during a workout, for post workout, they have bars that have fat and protein, you could do an hour before workout, they have drink mixes with fat and amino acids and electrolytes that you can do during a workout they have kind of a gel product that you can use during longer training runs.

And you could do those, you know, maybe they have 12 to 20 grams of carbs, you can do one every hour or so you know, and all these products. Again, they’re designed with the low carb athlete in mind, they’re designed to keep you in the fat burning mode to still prioritize fat burning, but give your body that little bit of extra energy that you need for those longer runs are those more intense workouts. So fat is fuel is a good approach and it’s something that you definitely want to try. And you might find that a little bit is all you need.

Okay, so again, like when should you start adding fuel and stop doing all your workouts fasted, again, just kind of play around with when you if your training is starting to tank a little bit or if you’re plateauing. But if you’re training for something like a marathon, and you’re up to 12 to 15 miles and you’re doing those fasted and you’re feeling pretty good, you might want to try you know, going forward from that point on, you might want to try fueling and see how it goes for you and try a couple of different products.

Try a couple of different fueling approaches, because here’s the thing, you don’t want to wait till race day right to try to fuel for your race. If you’re deciding you’re going to use fuel on race day. Don’t wait till race day to experiment with it; you have to play around with it ahead of time. You have to practice fueling strategies during your training, right? Nothing new on race day ever. Okay?

So that could be where you decide that feeling might be a good strategy for you. workouts that are over 90 minutes is a benchmark a lot of people use when they start to choose like maybe the fat protein combo for for the most part. And then as your intensity increases, your carb intake should increase as well. So the fuel sources, the carbohydrate, fuel sources can increase as your intensity levels increase, or even if you’re going super long, maybe you’re training for an ultra 50k 100k 100 miles, something like that, you’re definitely going to want to have, you definitely asked us fuel for something like that. And that that approach is going to be very different from what it looks like for, you know, fueling for a half marathon or something like that, right.

So, when it comes to fasted training, just remember, all or nothing, not always best. And really, what we’re going for with all of this is metabolic flexibility, we want to be able to burn both fat and sugar very effectively, right, we want to train our bodies to burn both fuel sources really well, so that we have the ability to use both types of fuel and improve our running, improve our fitness, improve our strength, improve our intensity, and become the badass runners that we know we can be okay.

So to do this does not mean that we have to do everything, all or nothing, it doesn’t mean we have to do all our training fast, it doesn’t mean we have to do zero carbs, it means we can use proper types of fuel and, and train fueled and, and use carbs in a very strategic way to help us and not hurt us. It doesn’t have to kick us out of fat burning mode, it doesn’t have to, you know, ruin what we’re doing here, right?

So, and as always, if you want some help with any of this or all of this, apply for coaching you and I will work closely together, we’ll put together a personalized plan for you. I’ll help you stay on track so you can achieve those goals so you can achieve your weight loss goals, your fitness goals, we can do it all cool. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply and I’ll see you over in the Running Lean coaching project. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.

If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.

141. How to Fix Your Metabolism

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If you are overweight, chances are it’s a problem of metabolism. Your metabolism is not working properly. By nature, animals (including humans) do not become overweight unless there is some kind …

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Podcast Transcript

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 141 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today how to fix your metabolism. If you are overweight, carrying around more body fat than you’d like, then chances are it’s a problem of metabolism, your metabolism is not working properly.

By nature, animals, like animals in the wild, including humans do not become overweight, unless there’s some kind of dysfunction happening in the body most likely a dysfunction of metabolism. One of the most common dysfunctions in humans is that we have either purposely or accidentally slowed down our metabolism. Okay, this is where the body is not burning enough calories to maintain homeostasis, which just means, you know, stable and optimal health.

And I usually don’t talk about burning calories here on the podcast. But today, I’m gonna make an exception because I believe this is an important topic. And I really want to share this information with you. So today, it’s all about how to fix your metabolism here on the Running Lean podcast.

And I read a lot of books on the topics of metabolism and in the art and the science of exercise and running and mindset and building strength and nutrition. Like I’m always reading books and listening to books and listening to podcasts on these topics. And one thing that I’ve found to be 100% true from everything I’ve read and listened to, is that while books might provide you with some knowledge, the personal application of that knowledge is a whole other ball of wax.

Okay, this is why I do what I do as a coach, because what’s written in a book is going to be generalized information. It’s not a specific plan that’s created just for you. Okay, listen, you have your own goals, maybe you want to run a half marathon, or maybe you want to lose 30 pounds.

And the way that you get there will look different for you than it will for somebody else, maybe somebody else is pretty lean, they just want to drop 5 or 10 pounds, maybe they want to qualify for Boston, these are different people with different goals and different body types. The same plan is not going to work for these two people, right?

So and then we talk about how we structure workouts, how much muscle we’re trying to build, the different food preferences that we have, our different lifestyles, work schedules, travel schedules, cultural differences, there are so many differences, like we’re all individuals. And so this is why I do what I do as a coach, because there’s not one book that’s going to work for everybody. There’s not one plan is gonna work for everybody.

And this is why I offer coaching because what works for them probably won’t work for you. So in my program, you and I sit down together, we put together a plan that will work for you based on your goals and your life and your preferences.

So if you’re ready to make some changes that are designed for you, specifically for you for your goals and your lifestyle, maybe you want to lose weight or get stronger or run faster, then come and join me in the Running Lean coaching project.

This is my unique coaching program for runners to help you crush both your weight loss and your running goals because you can do both. To learn more, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply. And get started I’d love to have you in the Running Lean coaching project where the project is always you.

All right, fixing your metabolism. How do you fix your metabolism? Why am I even talking about this today? Well, like I said at the beginning here, if you’re overweight, it’s most likely a problem of metabolism. There’s some kind of dysfunction happening there. And in order to get your body to where it needs to be to get your body into homeostasis to lose weight, we need to fix the metabolism. And I think we all kind of know this on some level that there’s some metabolism dysfunction and happening. But I want to talk about this kind of frankly today and I want you to understand what your metabolism is and what it’s not. Maybe dispel a few myths about metabolism because there’s a few myths floating around out there that you may think are true but maybe they are not.

I want to share some key lifestyle choices that really affect your metabolism, you know, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. And then there are certain things to consider, especially if you’re a runner, and a fat adapted runner. Okay, so we’re gonna get into all of that, let’s first talk about what metabolism is. So metabolism is a term that describes really, it describes all the chemical reactions in your body that keep your body alive and functioning, right, the main way, we’re going to be using metabolism today.

And the main way that I think we all understand metabolism is how we convert nutrients from the foods we eat into fuel that we can use for our bodies. Okay, so we convert our food into energy. And, and our body needs energy to breathe and to digest food and to circulate our blood and to breathe our lungs and to repair damaged tissues and cells and all those things, right.

So our body needs energy, and we get it from the food that we eat. And when our metabolism is working properly, our body is in a state of homeostasis when it’s not working properly, we’re out of that state. Okay, so what we’re really talking about is, you know, the process our body uses of converting our food into energy. And really, we’re talking about, you know, broadly we talk about calories, you know, it’s like, okay, we’re burning more calories. Okay.

So, metabolism is why some people seemingly can eat a lot of food without gaining weight, while others seem to eat a lot less and still maintain their weight or get fatter because their metabolisms are working differently. Some of this has to do with genetics, some of it has to do with lifestyle, we’re going to talk about all that in a second here.

But I want you to understand that really, your metabolism, the speed of your metabolism is how you burn calories, how you burn calories at rest, how you burn calories during exercise. And this is commonly called like your metabolic rate, sometimes they call it the resting metabolic rate or, or basal metabolic rate, those two terms are very similar. And we can kind of use them interchangeably. Okay?

If you’re a scientist, don’t give me a hard time about that. Because I don’t, there’s a subtle difference there. But I don’t want to confuse you with that. But let’s just say resting metabolic rate is what your body is burning, while you’re just sitting around not doing a whole lot just sitting around, right, which we do a lot of the time, right, you want to increase your resting metabolic rate, if you want to increase your body’s ability to burn calories. Okay?

So one thing that is very, very important, and I want to color this whole conversation with this is, what are you metabolizing? What types of calories are you burning? Because this makes a huge difference. We talk about how we want to burn more calories, and everybody’s talking about calories and how calories are so important. We got to burn the calories burn the calories, but what calories are you burning? Are you burning carbohydrates? Are you burning fat?

Because if you’re trying to lose weight and become fat adapted and improve your endurance as a runner, you want to be burning more fat, you just do, you can’t lose weight without burning fat, you got to burn the fat that’s on your body. Unless you have liposuction, right, you can certainly do that and lose some weight that way for sure.

But if you want to change your body composition, and lose fat and gain muscle, then we have to be training our body to burn more fat, we got to get more efficient at burning fat. And eating a diet that’s super high in sugar. And super high in carbs means that you’re just going to be burning mostly sugar and carbs. Right.

And for some people, this is fine. Maybe they haven’t gained weight. Their diet is mostly carbohydrates and sugars and, and they burn that stuff just fine. And they don’t gain weight. That’s great. But for most of us, probably 80 to 90% of us, that doesn’t work, especially as we get older, right? So if your goal is to lose weight, all the sugar and all the carbs, it’s going to make it very difficult for you right?

Losing weight means we got to be burning, we want to be burning mostly fat, right. So when you ditch the carbs, when you ditch the sugar, even as a runner, you get fat adapted and you train your body to be really good at burning fat. This means you’re going to be burning more fat at rest and during exercise.

So when we increase our metabolism, that means we’re actually going to be increasing the amount of fat that our body is burning, because our body is focused on fat as our main source of fuel instead of carbohydrates as our main source of fuel. I want to make this very, very clear at the beginning here so that when I talk about what I’m going to be talking about today, the factors that affect your metabolism, how we can increase your metabolism, the diet matters, it really, really matters, okay?

We want to be metabolizing more fat instead of carbohydrates, okay. And especially if you’re an endurance athlete, and especially if you’re an endurance athlete who also wants to, you know, change the body composition and lose some fat, we got to increase the fat metabolism, it’s also called fat oxidation, the more fat we’re oxidizing, or more fat, we’re metabolizing, then the more energy we have, and, you know, that’s how we lose weight, too. So it’s a win-win, it really is okay.

And that typical runner’s diet that I’ve talked about before of all sugar, no carbs, is probably not going to get you there. Because your body always wants to prioritize the carbohydrate metabolism, because it’s just an easy source of fuel for your body to use. And as long as you’re filling your body with that stuff, you’re never going to be really getting into fat burning mode. Okay?

So step one is to ditch the sugar, ditch the carbs, let’s get into fat burning mode. That’s really the first step here. Okay, that way, when we increase our metabolism, when we’re burning more calories, we will naturally be burning more fat, we’ll be using fat as fuel. And this is our goal here. Okay.

So let’s get into what affects your metabolism and how we can fix the metabolism, how we can increase the metabolism. And some of this is pretty interesting. And some stuff that I, in my research for this, I think, is kind of new data. And there’s some new studies out there. So I think you’re gonna find this pretty interesting.

So the first thing that affects your metabolism, of course, is going to be the foods that you eat, how much food are you eating, how often are you eating, you know, the amount of food you eat, can really affect your metabolism positively or negatively. If you’re over eating constantly, if you’re constantly eating more food at each sitting than your body really needs, you will slow down your metabolism, you know, your body just cannot handle that much.

And so what we want to do is not overeat, we want to eat just enough, okay, when we want to eat enough to be satisfied, you don’t have to count calories to know if you’re overeating or not, right. If you’re eating to the point where you get uncomfortable, you’re eating too much. Okay. But then we talked about the types of foods and already mentioned, you know, that we want to be, we want to get off the sugar and the grains in the refined carbohydrates.

And when we do that, we’re going to be obviously metabolizing more fat. But for example, if we increase our protein intake, you will actually increase your metabolism, at least temporarily, at least for a few hours. But if you’re eating plenty of protein at each meal, you’re going to do yourself a big service, because you’re going to have an increase in your metabolism overall.

And the reason for this is something called the thermal effect of food or TEF. So when you eat the food, your body has to burn some calories to digest that food, okay? And protein between the three major macronutrients, you know fat, carbohydrates, and protein, protein causes the largest rise in the thermal effect of food, meaning that your body will use more calories to process and digest protein than carbs or fat.

So dietary protein requires 20 to 30% of its usable energy to be used for metabolism of the protein. So that is huge, because 20 to 30% of the calories that you’re eating from protein is actually being used to digest the protein and to metabolize the protein compared to 5-10% for carbs and 0-3% for fats. So your body does not use much energy to digest and metabolize fats, it uses a little bit for carbs, but a lot of energy for protein.

So right there, eating protein will help you to increase your metabolism, right. It also helps you to feel more full, and helps to prevent you from overeating, because it’s really hard to overeat a lot of protein, sit down and try to eat, you know, a pound of chicken breast. I’m going to tell you right now it’s gonna be really hard to do. So, a lot of food and you know, but you could eat, you know, a couple pounds of pasta probably pretty easily without really feeling that full from that. Okay.

So people that have a drop in metabolism, when they lose a lot of weight, we’ll get into this in a second here. When people have a drop in their metabolism from losing weight, a lot of this is due to losing muscle mass and eating enough protein can help prevent this, right? One of the things that we want to do when we are setting out to lose weight is we want to lose fat weight, we don’t want to lose muscle weight.

So we got to make sure we’re maintaining some sort of strength training and getting enough protein. And that’ll actually help to keep your metabolism going. You know, because more muscle means you’re burning more calories in general. Again, I’m gonna talk about that in just a second. But listen, like we got to make sure we’re getting enough protein at every single meal, it’s definitely going to affect how your metabolism functions.

Okay, body size. Another thing that affects your metabolism. In general, larger people typically have faster metabolisms, right, it just requires more energy to maintain a larger body. So people that are larger, will generally have faster metabolisms. This is not to say that you should become larger.

That’s not what I’m saying here at all. But people with larger frames, even obese people tend to carry around the who are carrying around way more body fat and muscle, then than typical people, their their metabolisms are actually going to be a little bit faster, which sounds kind of counterintuitive, but there’s other things happening there. There’s some other dysfunctions happening there. But just understand that if you’re a bit of a larger person, your metabolism might be a little bit faster, okay?

Sleep is a big one. Sleep will really increase your risk of fat storage, okay, Sleep is linked to major increases in weight gain and the risk of obesity, and partly because of the negative effects of sleep deprivation on your metabolism. So lack of sleep actually increases blood sugar levels and increases insulin resistance. It increases your risk of developing type two diabetes, it affects your hunger hormone ghrelin, and your fullness hormone leptin.

And this explains why some people who are sleep deprived they’re often pretty hungry, and they have a hard time losing weight, you know, you’re in this, you’re putting your body in this chronic state of stress when you don’t get enough sleep. Right. So if you’re having a hard time losing weight, if you’re having a hard time metabolizing fat, one of the things you have to look at is getting good sleep consistently.

And good quality sleep on a regular basis, this is going to get your body out of that stress mode, and get your body working the way it’s supposed to. Another thing that affects your metabolism in a good way is caffeine. And I know some people don’t don’t do caffeine at all. And that’s great. But studies have shown that caffeine in coffee and green tea can have a little bit of a temporary boost on your metabolism and promote more fat burning.

So if your goal is to lose weight and burn more fat, then coffee can definitely help you there. I know that’s good news. For some of us, it’s good news for me, I love coffee, and I drink a little bit of coffee every day. And I really love it. And you know, I’m one of those people I don’t, I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t eat sugar. And really the only the only thing that I ingest that gives me a different feeling is caffeine, it does give me a little bit of a boost of energy in the morning when I’m drinking coffee and especially helps me with workouts. It’s a good performance enhancing drug, so to speak, right. So I’m cool with that.

And, you know, I think I live a very clean life. And if caffeine is the one thing that I use to kind of give me a little bit of a boost in the morning, then I’m happy to just keep doing that. Okay, maybe one day, I’ll decide that it’s just not for me anymore. But for now, I love my coffee and I’m gonna keep doing it. And it does help with weight loss, it does help with weight maintenance. And it does help with metabolizing fat. So there’s a lot of good things about caffeine if you like it if that’s something that you want to do.

And then another thing that can affect how your metabolism functions is the types of workouts you’re doing. So I used to be like, oh, just cardio, cardio, cardio all the time. And this is all anybody talks about: burn calories, burn calories. But one of the types of workouts you may want to consider if you’re not doing it already, is HIIT training. So this is high intensity interval training.

So this is where we’re doing very quick, very intense bursts of activity could be sprints, you know, sprint repeats, 400 repeats, it could be more of a group class where you’re doing, you know, high intensity intervals in a different way. But basically what happens here is that when you do these types of exercises, you increase your metabolic rate. And even after you’re finished with the workout, right?

So they found that the effect of increasing your metabolism is greater for HIIT workouts than for most other types of exercise. And that hit has also been shown to help you burn fat. And this is one of the reasons why I talk about intervals so much. Like we don’t want to be doing all this, what I call like chronic cardio where you’re just like, always doing the same kind of long ish runs at a, at a medium pace, like all the time, we want to be really doing some short bursts of intense activity, and some longer slower running as well to improve endurance, but the HIIT types of workouts are going to help you to increase your metabolism for sure.

And then kind of along with that is weight training. So increasing your muscle mass will help you to burn more calories and burn more fat. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, your body requires more energy and will burn more energy carrying around muscle, then fat. So the more muscle that you have on your frame, the more calories you are burning each day even at rest, right. So lifting weights can help you build muscle and maintain muscle.

And like I said, a lot of people that that do what I call like dieting, or you know they try to lose weight by restricting calories or something like that, a lot of times they’re just losing muscle along with fat, we don’t want to lose muscle, you know, we’re athletes, we want to maintain our muscle mass, or we want to build some muscle.

And when you build muscle, you will increase your metabolism and it’ll stay increased even at rest. So this is a really important thing. I talk about the importance of strength training all the time. This is one of the reasons why it’s important. And then they did this review of 58 different studies. So this is what they call a meta study where they study studies. And so they looked at 58 different studies.

And they said that resistance training was significantly more effective at reducing body fat percentage, total body fat mass and belly fat compared to a control group. So resistance training is going to be one of the best things you can do for yourself. If you’re not doing this currently, get into it. Okay.

Another factor that will affect your metabolism is how much water you drink. And they did a study, an older study back in 2013, but it was a study that showed that drinking 17 ounces of water. So roughly about a pint of water increases your resting metabolism by 30% for about an hour. That’s pretty interesting. So if you’re drinking more water throughout the day, you know, you are just going to naturally have a faster metabolism. Plus, we need water, water is good for you, we have to have it or we will die.

And then there’s something I want to talk about. I’ve kind of touched on this a little bit. But people that do like the crazy calorie restriction type of diets, they kind of put their body into what is called starvation mode. It’s also called metabolic adaptation or adaptive thermogenesis. But you know, I think we’ve all heard the term starvation mode. What does this mean?

So, starvation mode is when your body adapts to a calorie deficit. So when your body isn’t getting enough food, it will compensate by reducing its metabolic rate and the number of calories that you’re actually burning. So when you restrict calories too much for too long, then your metabolism will slow down significantly. This is one of the main reasons why I do not focus on just you know, restricting calories to lose weight. If you restrict calories as a weight loss method, it’s going to be problematic, you know, you can restrict a little bit, but you got to be careful not to restrict too much or for too long.

Because it can have a rebound effect, you will lose weight, but it’s also not sustainable. It’s one of those things where you might lose weight in the short term, but long term, your metabolism is going to slow down and then you’re going to start gaining that weight back again. And then you’re going to try to reduce calories even more and it’s going to have just a negative effect. And so this is just not a good way to go and think about us as human beings.

We don’t need to count calories. We’ve never counted calories until the last 50 years or so, like, do we need to be doing this? No, we don’t, there’s a better way. Just eat real food, eat food, our answer shows we have been eating for thousands of years. And I promise you, you won’t need to count another calorie again, okay. But when you look at shows like The Biggest Loser, you know, they have these obese people, and they lose a ton of weight by really restricting calories for a long time, and they’re doing tons of cardio or whatever. And they lose the weight, but then they gain it all back.

And then some, I think something like 96% of people on that show have gained the weight back or more, which is not a good, that’s not a good number. Okay. So starvation mode is a real thing. And we got to be careful not to do that. So that’s why I don’t preach restricting calories really, I don’t right.

And then there’s some other things that affect your mere metabolism. And things like hormone disorders, okay. So hypothyroidism will slow down your metabolic rate, causing a higher risk of weight gain. And then there’s genetics that can play a role here. But listen, genetics alone does not mean that you’re going to gain weight, or that you can’t increase your metabolism. So you might be predisposed to a slower metabolism or to obesity.

But if you maintain healthy eating habits, and healthy exercise habits, and you know, have a good, you know, quality of life, good lifestyle, good sleeping habits, things like that, you won’t become obese, you know, it’s kind of like saying, you have a genetic predisposition for alcoholism.

But if you don’t drink alcohol, you’re not going to become an alcoholic. So what I’m saying here, lifestyle matters. It really, really matters, okay. And one of the big myths I wanted to talk about here is age and how getting older affects metabolism, because I think that most people I’ve talked to have told me they’re just like, well, as, as you get older, you know, your metabolism just slows down. And as you age, you’re just gonna start gaining more weight. And it’s really hard to lose weight, because you’re getting older.

And they did a study back about a year ago, so this is a pretty new study in August of 2021. And this was in the Journal Science. And that suggests something very different. So thinking that your metabolism will decline, as you reach middle age and beyond. They’ve done this very intensive study. And I think this is pretty interesting. So they looked at over 6000 people, like 6400 people, ranging in age from eight days old, I know, pretty young to 95 years old. And they looked at their height, their weight, their body fat percentage, their average metabolic rates for when men, women and people in different age groups, like they looked at all these different people in all these different age ranges, okay.

And they put together a pretty clear picture of how our metabolism changes during our lifetime. Okay. And here’s what they came up with. I think this is really interesting. from infancy to one year old, your metabolic rate surges, right? It’s about 50%, higher than at any other time during your life. Okay, so from zero to one, it’s the highest right, then from one to 20 years old, your metabolism decreases by almost 3% a year.

So this is the biggest drop in your metabolism actually between one and 20 years old. From age 20 to 60, your metabolism doesn’t really change. That’s interesting, right? Most people think that between, you know, you know, 20 to 60 years when your metabolism really slows down. And it doesn’t really change at all. This is good news, right?

And then after age 60, the average metabolism decreases by 0.7% annually, which is not much that is not much. So just know that if you’ve been using, oh, I’m getting older as an excuse up to this point. We can’t use that as an excuse anymore. Okay. I just want you to think about that. Okay.

So these studies are showing us that your metabolism doesn’t have to slow down as you get older, and that it’s much more likely that changes in our behavior. Changes in our lifestyle are responsible for our metabolism, you know, increasing or slowing down. And this includes pre menopausal women and postmenopausal women. These same principles apply.

Just because you’re going through menopause does not mean that you will automatically gain weight. This is really good news. So whether you are male or female, whether you’re going through menopause or not, as you get older, stay active, get good sleep, maintain muscle mass, do some, you know, hit workouts, practice healthy eating habits, make sure you’re getting plenty of protein, and drink lots of water.

And you should be able to keep your metabolism burning nice and hot, nice and strong for the rest of your life. Okay, so this is all good news. I hope you guys got something out of this episode today. It was really fun. Putting this together. I think increasing our metabolism is really an interesting and really achievable goal for us. Okay.

And if you ever want help with this, if you want me to help you put together a personalized plan, reach out, I’d love to help you with that. We’ll put together a plan that’s based on you and your goals and your lifestyle and what we think will work for you. And then as we go through the process of change as we go through the process of changing your lifestyle and changing some of the eating habits and exercise habits. We’ll see what’s working and what’s not.

And we just continue to make progress, we continue to course correct as we go. That’s the power of coaching. It’s designed specifically for you and if you want a little help, just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply Apply for coaching and you and I will have a conversation we’ll see if this is a good fit for you. Cool. Right on you guys love you all keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

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